


Prodigal Parent

by BenRG



Category: Dumbing of Age
Genre: Canon Divergence (Post-Ross's Release), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24307318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenRG/pseuds/BenRG
Summary: It's been a long time since Carol Brown has spoken to her daughter and even longer since they've spoken civilly. Now it's time for them to discuss some family business and discuss old hurts to hash over and try to settle.
Relationships: Joyce Brown & Carol Brown, Joyce Brown/Male OC, Surprise Past Relationship
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Prodigal Parent

**Author's Note:**

> This work was began roughly at the time of Ross's first attempt to kidnap Becky and has been slowly germinating ever since. It diverges from canon when Blaine O'Malley bailed Ross out of jail.

Carol Brown looked again at the screen of her smartphone and then back up at the number on the mailbox, double-checking that it was the right place. Her quarry hadn't exactly made herself hard to find; why should she, in the end? However, when you've been out of contact with someone for more than a decade, it is easy to lose track of them and restoring those links can be... _problematic_.

Carol decided that she was being irrational. The time had come for her to take her courage in both hands, put her faith into practice and act in accord with her prayers. With a deep intake of breath, the silver-haired woman got out of her rental car and stepped out into the mid-morning sun of Orlando, Florida. 

The house was surprisingly large for someone likely firmly middle-class. Still, in this post economic-crisis America, even large plots sometimes went cheaply and, if there was one thing that Carol and her husband, Hank, had successfully inculcated into all their children, it was the willingness to work to support themselves.

Carol briefly cast her eyes across the two-level with the protruding section containing the lounge, the upstairs balcony leading off of the bedrooms and the big garage. Yes, it was clear she was doing well, despite everything. Did Carol have a right to be proud? What she was now was mostly due to her upbringing, of this Carol was certain. However, she had long ago chosen her own path (much to Carol's disappointment); who knows if she credited her success to that new path?

Carol walked down the path running through the nicely-tended lawn and knocked on the door.

Inside, Carol heard a familiar cheerful voice assuring her that she was on the way. The door swung open. "Yes, can I help... you...?"

Carol felt her heart in her throat. The woman standing before her had changed a lot in the years since they last had met face-to-face. She had long since worked off the last of her puppy fat and had grown an inch or two. Her eyes were marked with laughter lines but those oh-so-blue eyes... so much like Hank's... reassured her that she had the right woman, even though her waist-length brown hair and ready smile reminded Carol of her own appearance when she was a lot younger. What really chilled Carol was the look in those eyes. Surprise, suspicion and more than a little anger mixed with pain.

"Mrs Brown," the young woman announced coldly. "What brings you to my door?"

"Can't I visit my daughter?" Carol asked with a wan smile.

The acidic reply to that sent fingers of ice up the older woman's spine. "I seem to remember you telling me that I was 'no daughter of yours'!" Joyce snapped.

Carol winced. The accusation was all the worse for being factual. "I was... _wrong_... and angry at something that wasn't your fault and I wasn't trying to understand you at such a difficult time." Carol shook her head. "Joyce, what's done is done but there are some things that we need to talk about. Please... can I come in?"

Joyce scowled. As much as she wanted to slam the door in her mother's face, that old respect for her elders ingrained in her from her earliest childhood kicked in. Besides, she'd be lying to herself if she said she wasn't curious. Eleven years and there hadn't been so much as a peep from her mother; no reply to the invite to graduation and no indication that she even received the wedding invite. So, why now? "You'd better come in. Just keep it to the point and let's try to avoid rehashing old arguments, okay?"

~*~*~*~

Carol looked around her daughter's lounge with some interest. There was a sense of... _warmth_ here. This was a place that wasn't just somewhere someone lived. This was a _home_. This was a place of _happiness_. Despite the disapproval of most of her daughter's life choices, she couldn't help but be pleased at that much. 

"Here." Carol looked up at Joyce as the younger woman slid a steaming glass cup under her nose. Her nose twitched at the smell of peppermint. "I think I remember how you like it." Carol smiled as she took a sip of her tea as her daughter, her body language guarded, sat opposite her. "So, what is this about? After a decade, I can't think that there is anything that still needed to be said."

Carol drew in a breath and looked at her daughter. "Ross MacIntyre is dead."

Joyce raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry." The reply fell short of 'sincere' by several miles.

"Joyce, please!"

"Mother, if you're asking me to shed tears for that man, you obviously completely missed what he did and tried to do!" Carol sucked in her anger at her daughter's refusal to accept Ross had been doing a good thing. If he'd taken it a bit too far...? Well, to err is human and after all! Joyce's no-nonsense tone snapped through her mother's brief introspection. "What happened? I doubt he was sick; he always struck me as being in very good health."  
Carol gritted her teeth. "If you must know, he was shot dead by a policeman."

Joyce had been taking a sip of her coffee and barely restrained the urge to spit-take. "He _what?_ "

"He was going to see that liberal pup Congresswoman friend of yours... Daphne?"

"Dorothy." Joyce corrected and then shook her head in confusion. "She's not the representative for La Porte's district; what did he want with her?"

Carol had several ideas but she wasn't going to speculate, especially as she felt that Joyce might take it as a sort of perverse vindication. "I don't know. All I know is that he tried to get in to see her. She refused to let him in past the reception desk of her office; she claims that he had a gun and the police claim that he pulled it on her and was threatening her with it when they arrived... although I find it hard to believe that such a fine, righteous man would do that unless it was _necessary_! Beyond that... Well, I don't want to speak ill of the dead..."

Joyce had her own theory and wasn't so restrained. "Dorothy worked with Professor Bean when she re-settled Becky and she mentioned her story in her campaign broadcasts. Did he think that she knew where she was?" Carol didn't reply but Joyce didn't need that; she knew that man well enough to feel confident in her guess. "So, when Dorothy did the right thing and refused to tell him, he tried to intimidate her? Or maybe coerce her to talk like how he threatened to murder me and Becky if she didn't go with him all those years ago? Sweet merciful _Jesus_ , Mom! It's been nearly _fourteen years_ and he'd spent over half of that in _jail_! Why couldn't he just let this go?"

"She's his daughter! He wanted to save her soul!"

"He wanted to _control_ her! That's all he's ever been concerned about!" Joyce slammed down her mug. "Forced conversion is _worthless_ and you know it! It was all about his pride and not wanting to let Becky make her own choices, _especially_ if they made him seem less than perfect himself!"

"He was a good Christian father..."

" _No Christian would do what he did_!" The two women were standing now and glaring at each other. An outside observer would note just how similar their angry body language was; they might be near mirror-images except for Carol's shorter, mostly-silvered hair.

After a long, angry moment, Joyce made a deliberate effort to draw her anger back in. "Well, this is interesting and even a little surprising but I don't know why you thought that I would care..." Joyce paused and shook her head with a frown. "Huh. Well, Mom, the big revelation of today is that a man that I once considered a surrogate uncle is dead and I don't care. I guess that's what having piety without love inflicted on you and those that you love will do for you!"

"I need you to contact that... _woman_." Joyce was surprised at Carol's words and her face showed it. "She severed all ties with the community in LaPorte and you're the only way I have to find her!"

Joyce quirked an eyebrow. "He named Daddy as his executor?" Carol nodded. "I'm not surprised; after that fiasco with Blaine O'Malley, Daddy was practically the only one in the congregation who would still acknowledge him and that was mostly out of pity, I think!"

Carol scowled. "Your father knew that Ross, for all his methods were extreme and misguided, was doing the right thing!"

"Merciful God in heaven, I hope not!" Joyce sighed. "Look, I'll let Becky know. The truth is, Mom, that he died a long time ago in Becky's heart. Even if Ross left anything to her, and I doubt it, I'm not sure she'd be interested in anything he had to give to her!"

Carol looked at her tea for a moment before deciding to offer a hint. "I think that there may have been some things belonging to her mother that he kept for her."

Joyce smirked. "Oh, I'm sure I know what terms he would have attached to such a legacy, Mom." Joyce didn't bother to tell her mother that Becky had taken a lot of things belonging to her mother when she, Joyce and Joss had burgled the MacIntyre home shortly after Ross's first arrest. She'd probably be so disappointed that Ross never had the leverage that she had hoped.

Carol was outraged at Joyce's attitude. "Is wanting to give someone the reason to save themselves such a bad thing?"

Joyce's expression darkened at the off-hand confession of sorts. "Blackmail is blackmail. Dressing it up in positive terms changes nothing."

Carol couldn't bear to meet her daughter's angry eyes. "Oh, Joyce! We should have never sent you to that horrible place! It turned you into a _monster_!"

Joyce felt that she should be outraged by those words but, in a strange way, they helped ease her anger. She'd forgotten that, from her mother's perspective, she was someone who had gone seriously off-the-rails. "If by 'a monster', you say 'someone who looks beyond what she has been told is right and made sure of it herself', then I plead guilty to the charge."

Carol had to stand up and Joyce watched as her mother paced around the lounge, clearly desperately thinking for some kind of refutation and not being able to find one. Finally, she stopped in front of what Joyce called her 'memory wall' of photographs. The older woman found herself tracing all those lost years: Joyce at college with those friends who, in retrospect, had been so disastrous for her remaining the person she was raised to be. There was that do-gooder who was a Congresswoman now. There was that delinquent girl and her odd twin brother; the paradoxically masculine queer boy; that redheaded deviant and her mentally-abnormal partner; finally, the strange, quiet girl with glasses whom Carol vaguely remembered somehow always seemed to be around when trouble was brewing. As she moved forwards through time, Carol saw more and more often was a surprisingly average young man with mousy brown hair who just _failed_ to look stylish. She saw him more and more as she moved along the timeline and the subtle warmth and peace in the looks he and Joyce exchanged only grew as she did so.

Then came the wedding photographs and that happiness was clear to see...

"I suppose that I should be grateful that you married a _man_..." Carol murmured ironically. 

Out of sight behind her, Joyce flushed slightly and was glad that her mother didn't see her embarrassed reaction. She had no intention of ever mentioning that disastrous and ill-thought-out affair with Dorothy running from early sophomore year. Joyce had been hurting from being essentially ostracised by her kin for supporting Jocelyne's decision to transition and had lashed out, trying to do something wild, just to prove she was no longer the 'perfect girl' that her parents wanted. Dorothy, on the other hand, was facing up to her personal dreams and ambitions being nothing like what she had imagined and was, as a consequence, feeling cast adrift. The result was basically two friends misinterpreting a need for comfort and a desire to comfort others for a romantic bond. Joyce was just glad that the mess they both made of things didn't destroy her friendship with the deeply principled and idealistic woman.

In the end, the response Joyce came up with was: "Well, in the end, I think I satisfied myself that I was hetro when it came to life partners." Carol turned to look at her daughter and took in her nostalgic smile as she continued her thoughts. "What can I say? Sometimes, you're blessed to find the person that fills in all your blank spaces!" Joyce stepped closer to the wall and and looked at the wedding day photograph with a broad smile, so much like those from her childhood. It was clear to the older woman that this had been a very special day, just as it should be. "Craig taught me to look look to my future and be true to myself rather than play the roles others wanted me to play. As for me...? I guess I taught him that he didn't need to fit into the stereotype of the popular college man to succeed, be valued and be loved!"

Carol nodded and let her gaze travel further. There was a honeymoon picture (and the bathing suit... if a few small triangles held together by string could be called a 'suit'... was scandalous). A time-lapse of Joyce through her pregnancy and a picture of her and her husband with their children... Twins! Carol wasn't able to restrain the chuckle as she considered the picture of one of the babies pinching their father's cheek, turning his smile of pride and love into a bizarre contortion. "Only the two?" Carol asked. Joyce raised an eyebrow in a silent query. "I already had John, Justin and Jared by your age and Jordan was on the way!"

Joyce frowned. "You also nearly miscarried me because of the number of pregnancies you had so close together, Mom. I'm not about to keep squeezing out babies just to cure some perceived demographic imbalance!"

"It's your duty as a woman and a wife to be fruitful for your husband!"

Joyce smirked "Oh, Craig finds me 'fruitful' enough! Believe you me, if you knew Annie and Bobby, you wouldn't be in a hurry to add more terrors to the collection!"

Carol frowned but, she supposed, it was Joyce's husband's decision and it wasn't her business to interfere. Joyce had also, perhaps inadvertently, struck another raw nerve. Carol's grandchildren by her youngest child were strangers to her. "Where are they anyway?"

Joyce raised an eyebrow. "At kindergarten. They'll be starting first grade in the fall."

There was a long, cold silence. "So... you've decided to risk them having a _secular_ education?" Carol made the word sound like a vile curse.

Joyce's reply was as hard as flint. "I've decided that I don't want them to confront the world like it's an foreign country about which they know next to nothing and what little they do know is more of a _hindrance_ than a help when they approach adulthood, yes." Carol seethed a little at the strongly implied accusation but she couldn't deny the fundamental truth that, just maybe, Joyce had been a nearly-defenceless innocent abroad when she began at Indiana University.

"So, the tuition costs for the degree was for nothing?" Carol didn't mean for that to sound like an accusation but it came out that way.

Joyce wandered off back to the kitchen island and started sorting through the papers there; she'd been finishing off marking assignments before he mother's unexpected arrival. "Not at all; it's just that more than a few local children in the same church as me are benefiting!" She couldn't help grin. "Being 'Miz Taylor', the trusted math and reading teacher to all those bright, innocent little Fifth Grade faces is cute... and a bit daunting!"

Joyce a teacher at a public middle school? Oddly enough, that sounded right to Carol. She turned back to the memory wall. She couldn't help but grimace a little at one picture of Joyce, her husband and the children (still toddlers at that time) with a woman and a man in what looked like New York City by the skyline behind them. The woman was oddly _handsome_ although she was dressed and held herself in a very feminine way. "Joshua..." she groaned. "I know this is my fault but I don't know how...?"

"Mom..." Joyce sighed, shook her head and reminded herself of her own instruction not to 'rehash old arguments'. "Mom, Joscelyn is _happy_ , okay? She's got a career she enjoys, she's married to a man she loves and they've even adopted an orphaned child and are giving him a family and a future. I think that you should focus on that, not any regrets about a poorly-understood quirk in human genetics and neuroanatomy."

Carol wanted to shout... no, she wanted to hit something but enough bad things had happened in that past due to her anger over this matter. Instead she stormed back to the counter and sat down. Joyce watched her mother seethe and fight her emotions for a while, marvelling at just how _furious_ her normally even-tempered mother seemed to be right now. She found herself wondering just who and what this anger was directed at. In a few moments, she got her answer. "I blame myself," Carol said at last. "I missed something... I don't know what... some early sign that he was going astray. Why did he have to... _mutilate_ himself like that? He was such a _beautiful_ little boy"

Joyce sighed deeply. "I don't remember much, being the youngest but... Mom, honestly, was she ever _really_ a boy?"

Carol was about to reply automatically but something about that question triggered memories. Joshua had always been so... _sensitive and gentle_. He had never liked boys' pastimes, nor did he enjoy the rough-and-tumble with his brothers. She remembered the strange way he'd react; the quiet, almost _sorrowful_ smile he wore when his father tried to get him to be 'one of the boys'; the only girlfriend he'd had, in late high school, had been more a best friend and confidante than any kind of romantic partner. Carol sighed. "I'm... very, very unperceptive, aren't I?"

"She hardly advertised it," Joyce said diplomatically. "Besides, from what Joss has told me, she could hardly believe it _herself_ some days." Joyce reached out and touched her mother's hand. "Mom, seriously... If you do regret, then reach out to her. You've got a daughter, a son-in-law and a grandson out there. Don't you want to... at least try to have them in your life?"

Carol shook her head. "It's my just punishment for my sins."

"At some point, you have to decide if you've punished _yourself_ enough, Mom. God is merciful enough that he forgives if we truly repent."

"I don't think..." Carol shook her head. "I'm not sure if I'm really worth forgiveness, Joyce."

Joyce shook her head. She knew perfectly well that her mother had never forgiven herself for the divorce. The fact was that she and her father had been growing ever further apart ever since Jordan walked out of the family and Carol had responded by growing ever more intolerant and inflexible. "Mom, sometimes marriages fail. There is no point you torturing yourself over things that you can't change."

"Even when it's my fault?" Carol was wringing her hands. "Even when I am an _adulteress_?"

Now that came completely out of left field. "Adultress? What are you talking about what...?" Joyce covered her mouth in shock. "Mom! You and _Ross_?" Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place. The timing of the divorce and her father's unwillingness to discuss his decision to suddenly stop fighting to preserve the marriage.

"Ross was strong in areas I thought Hank was weak." Carol was nearly talking to herself. "I thought that his strength could patch our family back together, to make things the way they _should_ be...!" The older woman jerked up as Joyce touched her shoulder, her expression firm.

"Don't feel you have to tell me," Joyce said firmly. "I'm not God or Christ to hear your confession and condemn or absolve." Joyce drew in a deep breath. "It seems to me that you already feel bad enough about your own choices. Just... Don't try to fit what happened with Jocelyn as a 'punishment for my sins' thing. Even the Lord rejected that theory, remember?"

~*~*~*~

There were lots of 'worst moments' in Carol Brown's life. Some of them were her own fault; she'd admit to that. Some of them were caused by others. One in particular, though? Carol had never decided whose fault was that bizarre, fantastical interlude that had fed directly into her divorce. It wasn't as if she was even now ready to understand how she became enmeshed in something out of those blasted _comic books_ that Joyce had loved so much as a child!

Carol couldn't blame Joyce for putting that newspaper front page on her memory wall. She doubted that many more memorable things had happened at the latter half of her freshman year! **Notorious Mobster Arrested** was the main headline over the picture of Blaine O'Malley, battered and broken, being dragged away by the Bloomington Police. Under the main headline, a bullet point read: **FBI to Investigate LaPorte church on Suspicion of Money Laundering Offences**. "I still can't believe that happened." 

Standing by her mother, Joyce still couldn't believe that no-one saw through the frankly laughable attempted 'superhero' costume she was wearing in the picture, caught just in the moment she was laying out one of Ryan's buddies with a strong punch. Ethan told her it was based on the costume of a character called 'Spoiler' but, to her, it didn't disguise _anything_. What was the codename she was using? Oh yeah... she restrained a giggle. 'Avenger'. She was glad that Amber had finally convinced her that street brawling talent and a seriously-righteous right hook wasn't in any way the basis for a life as a superhero!

Carol was continuing. "He seemed such a genuine and nice man! Ross would have never been bailed without his help!"

"The best con artists always come across the nicest, Mom. Frankly, I was always a little shocked. I mean... shouldn't a conservative church be the ones most aware of and suspicious of generous strangers offering easy solutions without strings attached? Serpents, forbidden fruits and all that?"

Carol blew out a breath in annoyance, although she understood Joyce's obvious cynicism. "It seemed so much like a gift from heaven. Ross would go free and we had a skilled businessman to help us with all our funding woes." Instead, O'Malley had used the church to launder his criminal masters' narcotics and prostitution 'businesses'. He and Ross would go on to _kidnap_ Joyce and several of her friends (nearly killing one of them), hoping to coerce Becky into leaving with Ross and his own daughter into quitting college. This all led to a bizarre interlude where they were saved by a group of _costumed vigilantes_ who would jump to statewide notoriety by hunting down the collection of misguided young men who O'Malley had tempted into acting as his muscle and ultimately exposing the corruption in Bloomington's police department. "Instead there was this moment of insanity."

"One thing I learned in college? 'Sane' and 'normal' are too often defined by those who don't experience the wider world." Joyce sighed. "For what it's worth, Mom... I'm sorry for the heartbreak caused. For all I think that the church trustees brought this disaster on themselves by ever believing that monster, the congregation in general didn't deserve to be tarred with that particular brush." 

Carol nodded numbly. "Hank never forgave me."

"You ignored every warning Daddy gave about how unstable Ross had become after Auntie Bonnie died, mom. You campaigned and _hard_ for his release. You insisted that threatening to shoot Becky and me was somehow _right and justified_. You _embraced_ the unverified promises of a _stranger_ to get what you wanted. Truth told? I don't think I've ever forgiven you for that either. I doubt that I ever could." Joyce looked at her mother and noted once again that Carol's real sense of guilt was the court-enforced closure of her childhood church due to its becoming tied up in illegal money in just _one month_ of Blaine's stewardship of its finances. To this day, she had never shown the slightest regret of Ross's behaviour and motives or her own tireless enablement of them; she doubted that she ever would.

"Joyce... I _cannot_ believe he would have ever hurt you or Becky. It was a bluff; I swear it was all a bluff from a desperate man trying to save his little girl."

"You didn't look into his eyes, Mom. You didn't see the _self-righteous certainty_ there; the belief that Becky was better of dead than living 'a life of sin'. You didn't see his determination to be _slaughtered by the police in front of us_ if we didn't do as he demanded. I don't know if Ross ever loved Becky; I know for a fact that there wasn't a single Christian emotion in him at that moment, only rage, spite and determination to control." Joyce drew in a deep breath. "Regardless of his intentions, he did a very good job of hurting us both. I had nightmares for _months_."

Carol wasn't sure if she was angry at Joyce's continued hatred of Ross MacIntyre or whether she was angry at _herself_ for choosing the greater good of family and congregation over Joyce's sense of grievance (and maybe getting it wrong - this was a growing fear in her heart), thus creating a divide with her daughter that she doubted would ever be fully healed. She drew in a shuddering breath. "I've said my piece." She mentally berated herself. She wasn't about to let her faith be shaken by her truant daughter, no matter how reasonable and good her arguments seemed at first hearing. She suddenly felt the need to end this meeting, which had spun so out of control to the point where Carol felt that _she_ was somehow the penitent pleading for readmission into her family rather than the magnanimous parent welcoming back her lost daughter.

"That you have, many times before today too." Joyce's voice was sad. "Well, as I said, I'll tell Becky but I wouldn't hold your breath for a positive response." 

Carol nodded. "Let me know either way." The woman stood up and moved towards the door. "Thank you for the tea, dear." She took one last look at the memory wall; the most recent addition seemed to be a picture from the recent 10-year class reunion. Joyce looked at it too and thought about her friends.

Dorothy... _Congresswoman Dorothy Keener_... was well on the way to achieving her modified ambitions; to make a difference to the world, even if her name was never quite that famous as she'd hoped. Joyce really thought that she and Jacob made a great pairing; she didn't feel the slightest hint of jealousy that her two crushes had ended up together!

Speaking of crushes, Ethan had invited her to the opening night of his travelling comedy show. Of all the things he might have ended up doing, this was the last she'd have expected (no matter how unintentionally funny he could be in his nerdy ways).

Amber married Walky; Sal married Danny. They were all in Indianapolis now, working at Amber and Danny's software start-up ADSoft. Danny and Sal, who was the company's CFO, were a major powerhouse with Danny's amazing intuitive problem-solving mind when it came to control systems and Sal was the hard-nosed business sense that Amber and Danny lacked. As for Walky? Joyce couldn't help but be proud that the often-trivial young man had grown up so much over the years; he was more than happy to be the house-husband for his overachieving wife and was so much a healing and supporting figure for both the women in his wife's head.

What about Mazie Walkerton... _Amazi-Girl_...? Joyce's eyes moved to a newspaper cutting about the masked vigilantes active in Indianapolis. Well, Mazie and Sal had their city pretty much protected and... _under control_.

Billie was in Los Angeles now; she and Ruth split up in the end but had done much to heal each other. From what little Ruth said, her younger brother was doing well away from her grandfather's abusive 'care'. Billie had introduced her latest 'fancy' although Joyce felt that she still hadn't met the right person to settle down yet. Some people never did.

Last of all, Joyce thought with a grateful heart about her sister in all but blood, Dr Rebecca Saruyama PhD (paleo). God helps those who help themselves, Joyce reminded herself. There was no doubt that Becky had done all she could to find a future free of the shadows of her past.

"Joyce?" Carol prompted her, looking a bit closed off, as if she was deliberately distancing herself from the truths she'd just heard and that Joyce had hoped had been trying to accept.

Joyce nodded, suddenly feeling very awkward. She had a sudden prescient dread that this might be the last meeting for a very long time... or possibly _ever_. "Please think about what I've said today, Mom."

"Don't worry, dear, I think I'm old enough to know what's right and where I need to change, if I do." Carol shot her daughter a fixed and rather patronising and insincere smile. "Just remember this, Joyce: I love you and I would die for you and for your children. You need to trust in that and trust that God won't lead you wrong."

"He hasn't yet," Joyce replied with a little challenge in her expression. "Also, Mom? Dying is really easy when you think about it. _Living_ for someone? Putting them first day after day for your entire life? That's the _difficult_ part."

Carol made a grunting, snorting sound of annoyance. "I will pray for you," she concluded formally, sweeping out as Joyce opened the door. Despite everything, including continually screaming in her head that she was in the right and Joyce was in the wrong, Carol couldn't snuff out the seed of doubt and sorrow in her heart as she stepped out of her daughter's house.

"Yeah, me too," Joyce responded.

**Author's Note:**

> So? Did Carol change her mind and make the changes to reconcile herself with her family? Well, like the story of the Prodigal Son, the conclusion is very much up to you to decide.


End file.
